CHAPTER VIII
CARTER'S GHOST
On the broken porch of the abandoned house Amy stopped and waited forher chum to overtake her. When she looked back she cried out again.Forked lightning blazed against the lurid clouds. It was so sharp adisplay of electricity that Amy shut her eyes.
Jessie, still laughing, plunged up the steps and bumped right into thesagging door. It swung inward, creakingly. Amy peered over her chum'sshoulder.
"O-oh!" she crooned. "Do--do you see anything?"
"Nothing alive. Not even a rat."
"Ghosts aren't alive."
"Nothing moving, then," and Jessie proceeded to march into the ratherdark kitchen. "Here's a table and some benches. You know, MissAllister's Sunday School class picnicked here last year."
"Oh, I've been here a dozen times," confessed Amy. "But always with acrowd. You know, honey, you are no protection against ghosts."
"Don't be so ridiculous," laughed Jessie. She had put down the thingsshe had brought up from the lakeside, and now turned back to look outof the open door. "Oh, Amy! It's coming!"
There was a crash of thunder and then the rain began drumming on theroof of the porch. Jessie looked out. The clearing about the house haddarkened speedily. A sheet of rain came drifting across the laketoward the hillock on which the house stood.
"Do shut the door, Jessie," begged Amy Drew.
"How ridiculous!" Jessie said again. "You can't shut the windows.There!"
Another lightning flash blinded the girls and the thunder followingfairly deafened them for the moment. But Jessie did not leave her postin the doorway. Something at the edge of the clearing--some rods away,at the verge of the thick wood--had impressed itself on Jessie's sightjust as the lightning flashed.
"Come away! Come away, Jess Norwood!" shrieked Amy.
"Come here," commanded Jessie. "Look. Don't be foolish. See that thingmoving down there by the woods? Is it a human being or an animal?"
"Oh, Jessie! Maybe it is a ghost," murmured Amy.
But her curiosity overcame her fears sufficiently for her to joinJessie at the doorway. Through the falling rain the chums were surethat something was moving down by the woods.
"It's a dog," said Amy, after a moment.
"It's a child," declared Jessie, with conviction. "I saw its facethen."
"Perhaps it is the Carter ghost," breathed Amy. "I never heard whetherthis haunt was a juvenile or an adult offender."
"I guess you are not much afraid after all," said her chum. "Yes, itis a child. And it is getting most awfully wet."
"Wait! Wait!" the girl from Roselawn cried. "Don't run away from me."
Whether the child heard and understood her or not, it gave evidence ofbeing greatly frightened. She covered her face with her hands and sankdown on the wet sod, while the rain beat upon her unmercifully. Therewas no shelter here, and Jessie Norwood herself was getting thoroughlywet.
In a calm moment that followed the child piped, without taking downher hands.
"Are--are you the ha'nt?"
"What a question!" gasped Jessie, and seized the crouching figure bythe shoulder. "Do I feel like a ghost? Why, it's Henrietta!"
The clawlike hands dropped from the freckled face. The little girlstared.
"Goodness! I seen you before. You are the nice girl. You ain't aghost."
"But you are sopping wet. Come up to the house at once, child."
"Ain't--ain't there ghosts there?"
"If there are they won't hurt us," said Jessie encouragingly. "Comeon, child. I am getting wet myself."
But little Henrietta hung back stubbornly. "Mrs. Foley says ha'ntscarry off kids. Like my Bertha was carried off."
"We have some nice lunch," said Jessie, quickly. "You'll forget allabout the silly ghosts when you are helping us eat that."
This invitation and prospect overcame the fear of ghosts inHenrietta's mind. She began to trot willingly by Jessie's side. Butalready the rain had saturated the girl from Roselawn as well as thechild from Dogtown.
"Two more bedrabbled persons I never saw!" exclaimed Amy, when theyarrived upon the porch. "Do come in. There is wood here and we canmake a fire on the hearth. You can take off that skirt, Jess, and getit dry. And this poor little thing--well, she looks as though sheought to be peeled to the skin if we are ever to get _her_ dry."
She hustled Henrietta into the house, but kindly. She even knelt downbeside her and began to unfasten the child's dress after lighting thefire that she had herself suggested. "Spooks" were evidently wipedfrom Amy's memory; but she flinched every time it lightened, as itdid occasionally for some time.
"Say!" said the wondering Henrietta hoarsely. "I'm just as dirty as Iwas the other day. You don't haf to touch me."
"Oh, dear me!" cried Amy. "This child is never going to forgive me forthat. Won't you like me a little, Henrietta?"
"Not as much as that other one," said the freckle-faced girl frankly.
Jessie, who was taking off her own outer garments to hang before thenow roaring fire, only laughed at that.
"Tell us," she said, "why you think your cousin was carried off?"
"That lady she lived with was awful mad when she came to Foleyslooking for Bertha. She said she'd put Bertha where she wouldn't runaway again for one while. That's what she said."
"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Amy suddenly. "Do you suppose--Child! did thewoman come to your house----"
"Foley's house. I ain't got a house," declared Henrietta.
"Well, to Mrs. Foley's house in a big maroon automobile?" finishedAmy.
"No'm. Didn't come in a car at all. She came on foot, she did. Shesaid Bertha was a silly to run away when nothing was going to hurther. But she looked mad enough to hurt her," concluded the observantHenrietta.
"Oh!" exclaimed Amy again. "Was she dark and thin and--and waspishlooking?"
"Who was?" asked the child, staring.
"The woman who asked for Bertha," explained Jessie, quite as eagerlyas her chum.
"She wasn't no wasp," drawled Henrietta, with indescribable scorn."She was big around, like a barrel. She was fat, and red, and ugly. Idon't like that woman. And I guess Bertha had a right to run away fromher."
Jessie and Amy looked at each other and nodded. They had both decidedthat the girl, Bertha, was the one they had seen carried off in thebig French car.
"And you don't know what Bertha was afraid of?" asked Jessie.
"I dunno. She just wrote me--I can read writing--that she was comingto see me at Foley's. And she never come."
"Of course you did not hear anything about her when you searched upand down the boulevard the other day?" Amy asked.
"There wouldn't many of 'em answer questions," said the childgloomily. "Some of 'em shooed me out of their yards before I couldask."
Amy had undressed the child now down to one scant undergarment. Shelooked from her bony little body to Jessie, and Amy's eyes actuallyfilled with tears.
"Aren't you hungry, honey?" she asked the waif.
"Ain't I hungry?" scoffed Henrietta. "Ain't I always hungry? Mrs.Foley says I'm empty as a drum. She can't fill me up. That's how Icame over here to-day."
"Because she didn't give you enough to eat?" demanded Amy, in risingwrath.
"Aw, she'd give it me if she had it. But the kids got to be fed first,ain't they? And when you've got six of 'em and a man that drinks----"
"It is quite understandable, dear," Jessie said, with more composurethan her chum could display at the moment. "So you came overhere----"
"To pick strawberries. Got a pail half full down there somewhere. Thethunder scared me. Then I saw youse two up here and I thought you wasthe Carter ha'nt sure enough."
"Let's have some lunch," cried Amy quickly.
She got up and began to bustle about. She opened the two boxes theyhad brought and set the vacuum bottle of hot cocoa on the bench. Therewere two cups and she insisted upon giving one of them to Henrietta.
"I don't believe I could drink a drop or eat a mo
rsel," she said toJessie, when the latter remonstrated. "I feel as if I was in thefamine section of Armenia or Russia or China. That poor littlething!"
She insisted upon giving Henrietta the bulk of her own lunch and allthe tidbits she could find in Jessie's lunchbox. The freckle-facedgirl began systematically to fill up the hollow with which she wasaccredited. It was evident that the good food made Henrietta quiteforget the so-called ha'nts.
The rain continued to fall torrentially; the thunder muttered almostcontinually, but in the distance; again and again the lightningflashed.
Jessie Norwood fed the fire on the hearth until the warmth of it couldbe felt to the farther end of the big old kitchen. She and Henriettawere fast becoming dried, and their outer clothing could soon be puton again.
"I wonder if Momsy was scared when the storm broke," ruminated Jessie."She thinks the aerial may attract lightning."
"Nothing like that," declared Amy cheerfully. "But I wish we had aradio sending set here and could talk to her----"
"Ow! What's that?"
Even Henrietta stopped eating, looked upward at the dusty ceiling, andlistened for a repetition of the sound. It came in a moment--a suddenthump--then the thrashing about of something on the bare boards ofthe floor of the loft over the kitchen.
"O-oh!" squealed Amy, jumping up from the table.
"What _can_ it be?" demanded Jessie Norwood, and her face expressedfear likewise.
Henrietta took another enormous bite of sandwich; from behind thatbarrier she said in a muffled tone:
"Guess it's the Carter ha'nt after all!"
HENRIETTA IS VALIANT
THE PRIZE IDEA